


a truce in waiting

by afterism



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, set vaguely during the spring of Half-Blood Prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 13:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7895242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/pseuds/afterism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh," Draco says. "You got my note."</p><p>"Was I not supposed to?" Remus asks, and takes another step inside the cave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a truce in waiting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadow_lover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_lover/gifts).



> Dear shadow_lover, I started writing this for you on the day mm_rares reveals were supposed to happen, so thank you so much for requesting the same pairing for rarepairfest! I hope you enjoy it :D

"Oh," Draco says. "You got my note."

"Was I not supposed to?" Remus asks, and takes another step inside the cave. There's blood, the taste of it in the air, but it's dried and sticky and just another note to the damp earth and old rot that make this space so disappointingly familiar. He keeps his breathing even, his wand hand eased and steady.

"I — of course," Draco says, and doesn't make a move to get up. His back is pressed against the cave wall like it's all that's holding him together, hunched up with an arm wrapped tight around his waist and his knees hiding that. The other hand is clawed in the ground, shallow grooves in the dirt and the sides of his fingers smudged dark and rust-wet.

"I heard you disappeared from Hogwarts," Remus says, casual, as he steps closer. His _lumos_ is the only light in the cave — he can't see Draco's wand, and he can only hear enough breathing for the two of them, but the echo of his footsteps as he followed the short path into here only gave a beat to every possible way this might be a trap.

It would be an odd trap to set, certainly, but he's had to learn to live on instincts. Draco is too pale, too angular, made of too much panic and shadows to not be cautious.

"I left," Draco says, watching him.

Remus's toe catches a stone in the dirt, sending it clattering a few feet until it hits the wall with a click. Not deliberate — his shoes are stolen, and ill-fitting. Draco flinches, flattening his shoulders against the rough wall, and the scent of iron sharpens.

His mouth is a thin line when Draco lifts his chin again, staring up at Remus with dark, dry eyes; a challenge, even as Remus can smell the blood oozing under his hand.

Remus drops to a crouch, not close enough to touch. He thinks, for a heartbeat, of wild animals, and almost laughs.

"What happened?" he asks, gently, fumbling for the memory of a pale face sneering from the back of his class, and then lets it drop — Draco must be around seventeen by now, and his year of playing professor has been boxed up and buried in the dirt.

Draco looks at him flatly, a hitch of something sour around his mouth, and then he swallows and looks past him to the dark tunnel at his back. Remus is already on the balls of his feet, so tensed and careful not to flinch that he can only hold himself still, so he trusts his senses that nothing's there and doesn't move.

“There was something in the forest," Draco says, eventually, and after a beat his gaze flicks back to meet Remus's. "I want to join the Order."

This could be many things — _trap_ is still an option.

"What order?" Remus says, and watches Draco's mouth fall easily into a lip-curl of annoyance, the roll of his eyes that hits somewhere surprisingly raw.

"I don't want to _die_ ," Draco says, looking petulant about it, despite the cave and the blood and the hunger-hollowed shadows in his cheeks.

Familiarity, Remus thinks.

"Then let me see that," Remus says, gesturing towards Draco's left side with his wand, making the shadows slide along the walls as though caught in a wind. Draco, for a moment, looks like he might refuse, which is surprising in some ways and is utterly not in some others.

"Fine," Draco snaps, and the line of his jaw hardens as he stretches out one leg and gracelessly lowers himself down, all his weight on one bloodless, blood-stained hand until his thigh hits the floor and there's a twitch across his mouth. His robes are bunched up behind him, the hem muddy, and the wand-light catches streaks across the fabric that shine dark and odd and horribly familiar.

He doesn't move his hand until Remus has stood up and closed the final few feet between them, kneeling down by Draco's side and moving his arm away with two fingers and a thumb either side of Draco's pale, dark-splattered wrist. The blood soaked through his white shirt is clearer than the splatters on his robe; brown and blotchy around the edges in a rough oval. The centre of it is torn open, shirt and skin all glistening dark red.

Draco, after a beat, tugs his hand out of Remus's grip. His spine is arched as he leans against the wall, the line of his mouth and his shoulders all too tense to be casual, and Remus politely says nothing and holds his wand close.

The wound looks like a lot of other, little wounds crushed together, like a glancing blow of something barbed, not deep but unpleasant to look at. He can think of a dozen things that might of caused it — he could make lists by probability, starting with his own fingernails, but instead he looks close at blackened edges and where cotton gives way to skin.

"Have you been practising healing charms?" Remus asks, and hears himself a moment too late.

"No, _Professor_ ," Draco sneers. He ignores that, lets it roll off as he momentarily lets the light drop — a sharp breath, not his — and spells a ball of light to hang beside him as he runs the tip of his wand an inch above Draco's skin.

He's only good at this by necessity — the edges close up begrudgingly and Remus has no doubt they will leave a scar, but this spell stops the bleeding, has always held him together long enough to move for as long as he must. He's aware that Draco is watching his face, not his wand, and all the spells that are supposed to ease the pain have never quite worked right on him so he works slow and methodical and doesn't look up.

"There," he says, pointlessly, and doesn't notice the ache in his shoulders until he sits back and rolls them. Draco looks down at his side, reaching over with a tentative hand to ghost his fingertips over the raised lines of his skin.

He doesn't expect thanks. After a slow, considering moment Draco leans back against the wall, his spine a little looser, his hand resting over his side instead of holding it in place, and when he looks back to Remus his mouth is hard with irritation rather than pain.

The ball of light hangs between them, a little off to the side so it only obscures with sharp shadows.

"Now what?" Draco asks, drawled like he's grasping for control of this in the only way he knows how; arrogance and nonchalance.

"Now," Remus starts, and pauses to consider. "Now I will continue to disregard my orders and do something possibly very foolish in the hope that you are sincere," he admits, and straightens up with a wince.

"Well," Draco says, and shifts a little higher against the wall, sprawling his legs with a kind of forced confidence that catches Remus somewhere deep and half-forgotten. "Good."

Remus looks away, and then makes it deliberate — crosses silently over to where the cave narrows back into a tunnel and holds his breath, listens. The promise of drizzle that the clouds held when he arrived has thickened into a persistent, windless rain, drumming at the mouth of the cave and echoing down, and the light behind him sets everything ahead to a flat, featureless black. His focus on the jagged oval of midnight at the top of the tunnel is a guess at best.

"Can we go?" Draco demands, bored and impatient and so casual with it that Remus glances back, a thread of himself expecting the mess of everything to have been vanished and Draco to be pointing a steady wand at him, but, no. Draco is still tucked against the wall like a thrown doll, his chin dropped and his thin brows knotted as he stares up at Remus past his eyelashes. He's still tinged grey, washed-out and almost bloodless, but his eyes are bright.

"If you're ready," Remus allows. Draco flattens both hands against the floor, splaying his fingers, but there's enough breaths between that and him pushing down for Remus to halve the distance between them and then hesitate, as Draco moves as though spelled into it. He draws in his leg, throws his weight against the rock so he can get his feet under him, and clambers upright like he's forgotten how his joints work.

Remus sweeps a looks over him, and then pockets his wand. He's close enough to grab his arm when Draco hisses suddenly and stumbles half a step back. They're almost the same height, despite Draco being all hooked angles from the pain.

Draco sets his mouth hard but doesn't shove him off, which is all Remus needs to start dragging up memories of every butcher who is sympathetic to ramshackle men asking for the throw-away cuts of red meat. He curls his fingers around the thin cord of Draco arm and holds him steady as Draco, quietly, breathes.

Outside, somewhere in the rain, there's the clatter of a small rock bouncing down the mountainside.

Without a word Remus spells the light away and snaps the cave into blackness, the outline of the cave mouth splashed negative blue across the walls until he blinks it away.

"Wait here," Remus says, taking a step towards the tunnel before he lets go of Draco — a test of his stability, which is ruined by Draco immediately clutching at the back of his robe.

"No," Draco says, and Remus glances back in pointless quick surprise. He imagines Draco is frowning. "I'm not staying here," he insists.

His hand is twisting in the folds of Remus's robe, pulling it tight under his shoulders. The moment stretches — it could be nothing out there, just the rain or a fox picking its way across the mountain, harmless. It could be something else.

"Where's your wand?" Remus asks, after a beat.

There's a breath, a tug on his robes as Draco moves his arm but still doesn't let go. "In my pocket," he says, eventually, and Remus studies the darkness beside him.

"I daresay there's a reason it's not in your hand?" Remus says, and rocks back on his heel so the stretch on his robes loosens a little, the patches no longer straining. The only noise is the working of Draco's throat, almost lost under the echoing rain. Remus settles the bend of his knees, waits.

"It snapped," Draco says suddenly, clipped and quiet like his mouth has barely moved, like if he didn't say it too loud it might not be true.

"Ah," Remus says, and then, "I'm sorry." Draco is silent. "In that case, stay close," he says, and takes a step towards the tunnel — slow, so Draco can either keep up or let go of his robe.

Draco follows with a dull shuffle of feet across the uneven ground, and then makes a sharp-drawn noise that pricks in Remus's chest. "Here," he says, reaching back at a guess until he finds Draco's arm and follows the warmth of it, until he can wrap his hand around Draco's ribs and angle them so Draco's side is protected and untouched between them.

"Hold on to me," Remus adds, despite Draco's relentless grip on his robes, but Draco just makes a vague noise of agreement and Remus's stomach goes cold. He should just apparate them somewhere far away and safe immediately, but if someone has followed them —

"Can you apparate?" Remus thinks to ask, as they inch towards the mouth of the cave.

"Of course," Draco snaps, which could mean anything. His breath keeps hitching, jagged bursts under Remus's palm.

"We may need to leave quickly," Remus says, and keeps his wand out in front of them. He doesn't dare cast _lumos_ again, and they're both holding themselves stiff and careful in a way that puts their feet too close together along the narrow strip of slippery, uneven rock. Their ankles keep catching painfully as they make their way out towards the rain.

A few feet from the open air it starts flickering across his skin, stinging cold. The sky looms dark and wide, two shades paler than the rock framing it; this far up the mountain everything is stripped bare and there are no trees to soften it, no greenery to conceal anything, only shale and sudden drops.

Remus stops, and goes still as Draco sways into him. The rain is pillars of texture, straight down and unrelenting, and suddenly every hair on Remus's body prickles as he has the distinct sensation of something gliding close over his head. Draco sucks in a breath — and then the bright, fizzing tip of a vicious spell comes flying out of the darkness and Remus is already moving, throwing them both against the opposite wall of the tunnel so the spell bounces past and crackles down into the cave.

There's no _time_ — he can't hear anything but the rain even as another spell shoots burning green towards them. Draco flattens himself against the wall and Remus blocks it with a twist of his hand, jumping forward to keep Draco shielded as he sends something bright and disorienting out towards the source. His shoes keep slipping on the rock; Remus jars his shoulder against the wall and deflects the curse that shivers in acid-fast angles from the right.

They're on the main path, Remus thinks, and only takes a moment to fling his hand back and grab Draco's arm before he lunges past the mouth of the cave. An offensive shield sparks a glimpse of robes, a curve of a skull, and Remus forces his focus away as his hand points up and blasts out a chunk of the mountain above them in an chaos of flint.

In the same breath he hauls Draco close, and disapparates them away.

  
———  


When the world expands again they're standing in a forest, thin moonlight shining watery through the bare branches. Every direction is empty and unmoving and the silence pounds in his ears, the fight still burning in his veins, and it takes Remus a few breaths that fog the air to realise Draco is clutching hard at his collar and his arm, panting against his shoulder.

"They won't have followed us," Remus says, habitually reassuring before he considers the truth of it, and in the next exhale he has Draco pinned against the nearest tree, his palm flat and hard on his chest and his wand pointing at Draco's throat. Draco's eyes fly wide and moon-bright, a choked gasp that stops as his back hits the trunk, and Remus swallows down on the heat that shocks through him.

It's been a while since he touched anyone with such deliberate force. This is — not worth the time to consider it.

" _Specialis Revelio_ ," Remus says, focusing hard on nothing but the magic, and then tries a few more trickier ones to be sure as Draco's heart thunders under his hand and his mouth slips from winded horror to just winded, lips parted and pale as he sucks in every breath like it's fighting back.

There's no trace or tracker on him. Remus touches the tip of his wand under Draco's chin, precisely furious. "Did you tell them where to find you?" Remus asks.

"No! I didn't! I —" Draco begs, the only colour on his face splashed thin and high on his cheeks, and then he is scrabbling at the left sleeve of his robe, yanking it up past his elbow. "I don't even have the Mark! Look!"

He's holding his forearm flat, and although all the dirt and blood and streaks of dried rust look black in the half-light of the moon, the inside of his wrist is unmarked by any tattoo. Remus stares down at it, his wand unmoving.

Draco seems to decide that honesty is the only thing left for him. "He was going to initiate me when I— when I completed my mission. But I didn't, I—" he stumbles, swallows, and Remus draws back his wand an inch so it doesn't dig into his jaw. "I failed, and now they're going to _kill me_."

"So now you want the Order to protect you," Remus clarifies, eyes hard.

"Yes!" Draco gasps, eyes wide and pleading. "No one else can! And you're the only one I thought —" he trips over his own tongue, then powers through: "You're the only one I thought might actually come find me," he says, and seems to deflate, like secrets were the only thing holding him together. He looks his age, suddenly; scared and lost and overwhelmed.

"I see," Remus says, and then steps back so the hand over Draco's heart is supporting instead of trapping, five points of contact across his chest. He lets his wand arm fall to his side as his shoulders unhitch with a rough exhale. He's not sure whether to consider that a compliment, or not.

He does, with a certainty that holds firm under his ribs, believe him, but the way his fingers itch with the need to press close again sets uncertainty pulsing through him. It's absurd. It's, luckily, not his decision.

"Come on, then," Remus says, dropping his hand away, and Draco lifts his head with a frown. "There's an old house nearby, I'm fairly certain it will be empty."

"You're — what?"

"I'll let the Order know what's happened, once you're safe. It's not up to me, I'm afraid," Remus says, holding the truth very carefully on his tongue, and watches as Draco blinks and looks away. "It's not far," Remus adds, inclining his head, and Draco swallows, and nods.

Draco hunches up, tensed and ready to move like each muscle needs careful thought before working, and for Remus's own sake he should let him continue — but the constant need to be useful throws itself up against ill-placed longing and wins. He moves in close and wraps an arm around his ribs again, holding him up securely and without heat, and breathes carefully instead of startling when Draco forgets to hold himself stiff and bends into it instead, his weight sinuous and warm against him.

The house is visible through the trees, for those who know where to look. The woods are old and tall enough that there are very few plants surviving in the shade of the forest floor, and although climbing ivy is determined to pull down one side of the house it still stands, rotting quietly, a single storey of cobbled brick and a slate roof that's more plant than tiles.

"I used to come here during the school holidays with — my friends," Remus says, with an odd urge to fill the silence. The dry leaves shuffle and crunch under their feet.

"Who owns it?" Draco asks, his voice quiet.

"I've never found out," Remus says, light and truthful. "I always assumed we were the only humans to spend much time there, but I think a family of badgers once lived below the chimney."

Draco doesn't reply, leaning heavily against him, and when Remus casts a glance down Draco's eyes are almost shut.

"Almost there," Remus says, soft, even as he pauses to hold Draco secure while tracing patterns in the air with his wand, checking that nothing's in there, nothing's waiting, nothing's _followed_ them.

There's an odd, rolling feeling high in his chest, somewhere between nostalgia and homesickness, but he swallows it down and propels them both forward.

"I'll contact the Order once you're settled inside," Remus says, as they approach the doorway — the front door, improbably, still fixed and standing in it, looking gnarled and ancient. "There's quite a few people who will be pleased to hear there's word of you."

Draco shifts against him, moving his shoulder back so he can look up. "Don't they know you came to get me?"

Remus hums, light and vague. "I was somewhat out of the way when Hedwig found me."

"Hedge—? oh, Potter's bloody owl," Draco says, the curl of his lip snagging in his voice. Remus taps his wand on a knot in the wood, a little above the rusted door handle. Something clicks.

"I believe you're the one who sent her," Remus says, glancing at him sideways before he pushes open the door with one finger. It swings open easily, and Remus catches himself smiling fondly at the hinges.

"That doesn't mean I know its _name_ ," Draco says, oblivious. "And look," he says, shoving his hand in front of Remus's nose. Remus blinks, and focuses on it — there are a few raised lines that might be beak-scratches, but in the darkness all the smudges look the same. "Look what that crazed animal did to me. I'm lucky it took my note at all," he whines.

"Yes," Remus says, simply, and Draco shuts his jaw so quickly his teeth click together. Without a word Remus conjures up another ball of light, gleaming golden as he flicks it up to hover in the middle of ceiling, and helps Draco inside.

The memory of the last time he was here rises up like champagne bubbles, and pops. Everything is the uniform grey of decades of dust, except the piles of dead and desiccated leaves under the small, empty holes where the window frames once held tight. There's the table with two and a half legs, mostly held up by the wall and a defiance of gravity, and the short counter with a once-white sink and a tapless pipe above it.

It smells mostly of the forest, leaf mould and bark with a lingering taste of fungus and stagnation that coats the back of his throat. The heavy stone he used to cover the crack in the hearth still sits in the middle of the fireplace, blackened and dusty, and the pile of wood beside it is mostly cobweb and hollow bark, but it will do.

"Will we be here long?" Draco asks, faintly disgusted.

"Hopefully not," Remus says, and half-helps, half-drops, Draco down to lean against the wall opposite the fireplace, his legs slipping out in front of him and making dunes in the dust.

Despite everything, despite this hovel being more of a step-sideways from the cave rather than a step up, Draco leans his head back against the cobble-stone wall and closes his eyes.

Remus watches him for a long moment, thinking of blood, and then conjures a tall glass and _aguamenti_ s it full.

"Drink this,” he says, holding it out until Draco squints at it, and takes it with both hands.

"I won't be long," Remus says, and steps outside, pulling the door almost shut behind him so only the thinnest thread of light slips though. It paints a golden line across the leaves that wobbles and vanishes within a few long paces from the house.

The moon is waxing but not tugging at his bones yet. He takes a breath, looking up at the scattering of stars he can see between the bare branches, and then sets to work spelling a wide circle around the cottage into a dome of untouchable invisibility.

His brain, so adept at torturing him, keeps clicking through every pureblood he shouldn't have ever allowed himself to be attracted to. Spending so much time with werewolves has only made him long for humanity, but as always he keeps finding all the edges where he doesn't quite fit, all the things he can't possibly let himself have.

The dome of protection shimmers slightly in the air, fainter than the lingering clouds of his breath. The problem is — Remus stops, for the first time in days, and lets himself indulge in his own self-loathing — the problem is that desire sits in him like a half-buried thing, dull and forgotten under guilt and hunger and the crack of his bones every month, but that thready pulse of _want_ is undeniably there spinning images of something eager and promising under his fingertips.

It is, perhaps, the familiarity of that forced confidence, the swagger that sits in Draco's throat, even the angle of his jaw and the way he wears horror that fits into a pattern that was set while Remus's limbs were still growing, but the most common thing about it is the burn of disgust that instantly follows. He's not allowed — he can't let himself _want_ things like that.

The mission, Remus thinks. His mission with the werewolves might be salvageable, but in truth he hardly paused before rushing off to play at being a wizard again.

His patronus, with a clipped message of where and why and _Draco Malfoy_ , vanishes into the distance with a shiver of silver.

Remus turns on his heel, not glancing at the sky, and goes back inside.

Draco is clutching the glass between his hands, staring into the empty fireplace, but he looks up and manages a confused, possibly friendly slant of his mouth as Remus snicks the door shut behind him.

"How are you feeling?" Remus asks, casual, and glances at the fireplace as he considers whether the charms are strong enough to hide smoke.

Probably, but paranoia wraps tight around his fingers. He looks back at Draco to find him staring down at his stained hands, lips parted and frozen like the answer is caught in his throat and is threatening to choke him.

"Here," Remus says, catching Draco's attention so he doesn't startle when Remus settles down beside him, shoulder against the wall. He takes the glass from his unresisting fingers and sets it somewhere behind him with a dust-muffled thud, and then takes Draco's hand by the wrist before he can guilt himself out of touching him so deliberately.

" _Tergeo_ ," Remus says, pointing his wand at Draco's knuckles, and the layers of filth obligingly vanish in wide, sweeping strokes.

He's aware that Draco is watching him instead of his hands again, and he ignores it with the same determination as he works. He turns Draco's hand over to clean his palm, holding his expression shuttered and unmoving as the dirt disappears and reveals a rainbow of bruises blossoming stark on the heel of his hand. There are scratches too, shallow and long and wrapping around the curves of his fingers.

Draco makes a noise that hits Remus like impatience, and he drops Draco's clean arm down to rest on his thigh. A breath, and he holds out his hand for Draco's other one — and Draco doesn't hesitate before sliding the back of his knuckles across Remus's palm and leaving it there, heavy and slightly cold and not trembling for even a moment.

And then Remus makes the terrible mistake of looking up before he remembers that Draco is staring at him. There's something predatory in his eyes that should, in this situation of werewolf and human, be somewhere towards comical, but instead it flares hot at the base of his spine and Remus feels dizzily, _absurdly_ , wanted.

It isn't always the worst possible people are the most inconvenient times that make him feel like this, but it is starting to settle in uncomfortably like a habit.

There should be something he could say, a polite deferment to gently, ruthlessly smother the heat in the air, but his mouth is dry and Remus looks away first, adjusting his hold of Draco's hand to finger points so he can vanish away all the dirt with precise sweeps of his wand.

He lets go without ceremony when finished, looks around the bare stone walls while Draco smooths his hands together with a soft shush. Remus twists until he can settle more comfortably against the stones and says, "You should get some sleep."

Draco leans his head back on the wall, baring his throat. "I don't sleep," he says, and out of the corner of his eye Remus watches him pull a face. "I mean, I haven't — I barely —"

He swallows, and gives up on the kind of confession that Remus is intimately familiar with.

"I'll keep guard, if you like," Remus offers, as though that's not exactly what he was going to do anyway, and pointedly doesn't think about dogs.

There's a pause. "Thank you," Draco says, quiet in a way that catches sincerity in Remus's chest, and slides closer in a drag of dust until his knee hits Remus's leg, close enough that every muscle in Remus's body goes tense with urgency. This isn't new; _shouldn't_ be new, after hauling him out of a cave and across the country in a breathless squeeze, but the instinct for danger thuds with every heartbeat.

Making protests about _werewolf_ and _barely of age_ would require admitting something was happening, and Remus knows he is, at heart, a coward.

Draco leans his head against Remus's shoulder with a shock of warm weight, and holds himself so awkwardly that Remus feels conned into wrapping an arm around his waist, and this — there must be better ways to do this, surely, but anything else would require a level of purpose and intent that Remus's own sense of self-preservation would immediately put a stop to, so they're stuck. He can't even shift to give his tired back some support, and Remus fails not to feel overwhelmingly _old_.

He thinks of Grimmauld Place, and selfishly hopes no one is putting up too much of a fight.

After several long minutes Draco's breathing has evened out, his body curving in towards Remus's warmth, and Remus considers whether spelling away the ball of light would make this better or worse.

Distractions, he thinks. He turns over how he left the pack and decides how to slip back in, if needed. They already know he's spent too much time trying to fit in with wizards; a relapse at the call of a friend in need will drop him to the bottom of the hierarchy but not get him killed, hopefully.

The information he's overheard so far has been only occasionally useful, but bringing in the son of a Death Eater, however willingly — and yes, that didn't take long. He glances down at the messy fuss of Draco's hair and looks away, hardly able to sigh in self-disgust without disturbing him. The light flashes out with a twist of his hand before he can second-guess it, dropping the house into darkness.

Remus rests his head against the wall, and indulges in old memories that curl warm in his stomach more than they hurt.

The night tips slowly, and Remus waits. He might doze in that way that's barely better than not sleeping, shallow bursts that disappear at the first whisper of a breeze, but at least he has the practice of patience and a tendency towards stillness when Draco shifts against him, hunching up his shoulders and drawing himself in as he reluctantly wakes up.

Draco stops moving when he's properly awake, silent as he adjusts to not being wherever he thought he was for those first few breaths, and then lifts his chin so Remus can feel himself being peered at in the darkness.

"Oh," Draco says, without obvious meaning, and his hand falls onto Remus's thigh like an accident. He doesn't move it.

It's cold enough that his breath lingers like ghosts, and that Draco's hand feels very warm even through the layers of his robes and his trousers, and his bones have somehow frozen because he feels utterly unable to move. The not-quite complete darkness makes everything feel timeless and possible, like they've stepped out of the world and are waiting for the signal to be let back in.

"Um," Draco says, and Remus has the fleeting impression that wasn't supposed to be out loud, and then Draco crashes up and finds his mouth with a shock of pressure and stays there. It burns sudden and hot in his neck and his stomach and his fingertips, that thready pulse of desire thundering bright with recognition, and Remus — there's no excuse not to pull away, to stay cold and unmoving, but instead he parts his lips in a helpless gesture and the noise Draco makes hits like fiendfyre, terrible and consuming.

Draco shifts, one hand sliding around Remus's neck like an anchor before he swings his knee over Remus's legs and is straddling him, pouring himself into the kiss like it's his last hope of recovery, and that's the thought that finally guilts Remus into grabbing Draco by the arms and holding him still enough to pull away.

"Draco," Remus says, quiet and cautioning.

"Lupin," Draco mocks, sounding happier than — ever, really, in the absurdly short time Remus has been here, and strains against Remus's grip.

"Not —" Remus starts, and falters because what, not now? Not tonight? Not ever? His hands loosen.

Draco slides his mouth to Remus's ear, catching hot breath along his jaw, and says, "I want —"

Outside an owl hoots, loud and baleful, and Remus's heart jumps so violently that his shoulders smack the wall. Draco pulls back sharply.

Remus makes moves towards scrambling up, flattening his back against the stones, and Draco untangles and leaves a cold lack of pressure across his legs as he sits back on the dusty floorboards. It takes longer than it should to get to his feet, and Remus has no idea where his blood has rushed to the surface, feeling warm all over, but he's glad for the darkness.

"I won't be a moment," he says mildly, and escapes outside.

Beyond the edges of his protection there's an owl, hopping from branch to branch like it's looking for a way in. There's a pouch tied to its leg, and Remus strides out of the dome like he's convincing himself he's in charge of his own limbs and tries not to flinch when the owl spreads its wide wings and glides down to the lowest branch, a few feet from his face.

It does, at least, let him draw open the pouch and take out the scroll inside, and flies off again with only a brief, painful nip at his fingers.

Remus unfurls the note, and tries to crack open the wax seal. And then tries again, when his thumb slides over it as though greased, and frowns. He lights the tip of his wand and turns the paper over and finds an odd flutter of hope in his chest as the words _Draco Malfoy_ sit clear in cursive on the front.

"It's for you," he says, shouldering past the front door, and Draco frowns up at the light and doesn't lift up his hand until Remus has been holding out the letter for a handful of heartbeats.

Remus selfishly keeps his _lumos_ as the only light, and stands close. There's a pause, as Draco stares down at his own name, and from this angle Remus can't see his face — and then he turns it over and cracks open the seal without an issue and reads:

> _Dear Draco,_
> 
> _The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London._
> 
> _Yours sincerely,  
>  Albus Dumbledore_

"Just like that?" Draco asks, faintly. 

"Fidelius Charm," Remus explains, feeling light in a way he knows won't last — he lets it sink through his ribs and doesn't chase. Small victories, as always. "It means you can get in, at least. Come on," he says, and after a long moment Draco drags his gaze away from the paper and looks up.

Remus holds out his hand. "There will be plenty of time to sort things out once we're there," he says, soft, and Draco looks at his hand and then down to the paper clutched between his, making valleys between his fingertips.

"Fine," he says, an edge of impatience on his tongue like a hidden blade, and grips Remus's fingers tight as he hauls himself up with a wince that becomes a sneer. It's reassuring, in a way — watching Draco smother everything under arrogance and the jut of his chin, hold himself together with nothing but edges.

Remus looks at him, waiting until the snarl catches on his expression and falters out into something that glimmers honest and bright before Draco looks away, a flush of colour in his cheeks.

"Try not to insult anyone immediately," Remus says mildly, feeling more like himself than he has for weeks, and Draco squeezes his hand for a breath before Remus smiles, and apparates them home.


End file.
